This is the sandwich that Rowan will not eat in his lunch today at school.

It won't matter that he ate, enthusiastically, this precise sandwich — chicken salad and lettuce packed into a whole-wheat pita — on the weekend.

It won't matter that I carefully lined each inside surface of the pita with a vapour barrier of lettuce, so as to prevent sogginess. He will preemptively declare it soggy anyway. It won't matter that I have written him a loving note on a Post-it, explaining my lettuce strategy, and stuck it to the outside of his lunch container. (It will not matter that I also wrote on said Post-it, "And have I told you that you look gorgeous today?" He will see right through my flattery, but maybe he will smile.)

Rowan will say that he likes pitas at home, but not in his lunch at school. Unless, of course, the pitas at school come from the annual Pita Day, in which sandwiches are ordered from a restaurant and you have to pay for them. Those sandwiches are edible at school. But this one won't be.

And here we are, at an impasse. Me, making the sandwich. Him, not eating it. We are partners in a complicated dance, balancing nutrients with ease of preparation, health and appeal, texture and cost, availability and variety. There's no foolproof solution: some (rare) days, he eats everything. Other days, the exact same lunch comes home untouched. And so I try, hoping that today he will eat the sandwich (and even enjoy it), girding myself for the likelihood that I will dump its uneaten remains into tonight's garbage.

This is the sandwich that Rowan will not eat in his lunch today at school. Unless, of course, he does.